From technician to multi-shop owner, Carl Hutchinson of Complete Automotive in Missouri shares how he built a thriving, people-first business rooted in ethics, mentorship, and accountability. A Master ASE and AMI-certified professional, Carl opens up about the real leadership lessons behind sustainable growth and strong shop culture. Hear how hiring for attitude, creating apprenticeship opportunities, and balancing KPIs with team wellbeing helped Carl grow a high-performance shop that values learning and integrity. Standing at the Crossroads with Carl Hutchinson reveals how purpose-driven leadership can reshape the future of the automotive repair industry.

Host(s):

Kent Bullard, COO of The Institute

Michael Smith, Chief Strategy Officer at The Institute

Guest(s):

Carl Hutchinson, Owner of Complete Automotive

Show Highlights:

[00:00:00] – Kent introduces the Crossroads series and welcomes Carl Hutchinson, laying out his background and values.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVN5iNrWm4

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Episode Transcript:

Kent Bullard: Welcome to the Institute's Leading Edge, the Crossroads podcast where we examine the crucial decisions that professionals make that define careers, that shape industries that inspire thought leadership and that build lasting legacies. I'm Ken Bullard and I'm joined with my colleague Michael Smith.

Kent Bullard: And today we have the pleasure of interviewing with Carl Hutchinson, the owner of Complete Automotive out of Missouri. Our guest today is a seasoned automotive professional with both a MI and a master a SE technician certification with an extensive experience as a service advisor beyond his technical expertise.

Kent Bullard: He's a dedicated family man celebrating 40 years of marriage with his wife Maureen, and a proud father of three children. With a passion for scuba diving, spearfishing, and spending time at the lake, he finds joy in both adventure and travel and guided by his favorite saying, just because he can doesn't mean you should.

Kent Bullard: He brings wisdom and a thoughtful approach to every endeavor. A committed Christian, he's been honored with the Vision Humanitarian Award, and the Small Business of the Year Award, reflecting his dedication to his community and industry. Above all, he cherishes his role as a husband, calling his wife Maureen, his best friend and greatest support.

Kent Bullard: We're excited to dive into his journey, insights, and the values that have guided his success. Welcome Carl to the Institute's Leading Edge Crossroads podcast. Welcome, carl.

Carl Hutchinson: Thank you. That's quite our introduction. I'd like to meet this guy.

Kent Bullard: Just look in the mirror, man. Look in the mirror.

Michael Smith: We're glad we did. Yeah.

Kent Bullard: So I'd love to start off with we always start off with the same question. You know, what originally drew you into the industry, but most importantly, what made you commit to it?

Carl Hutchinson: Oh that's pretty in depth. What drew me to the industry was just kind of growing up in it, you know, like the short story is my stepfather was a technician and mechanic.

Carl Hutchinson: He didn't do it professionally af especially after I came along. But he still had that passion and I can remember many projects that he would buy and bring home. They were basket projects, something that somebody had taken apart and couldn't put back together. So he would bring them home and put them together and make them work.

Carl Hutchinson: And it's just kind of inspired us to, to be in, in that. And not having a lot of means, we'll put it that way. We did without a lot. So if we wanted something, it was usually a basket project. If we wanted a motorcycle or a lawnmower or whatever, we usually wound up buying something that needed to be put together.

Carl Hutchinson: And so that's how it kind of got started. And then I think my love of it was the projects, you know, just every day, honestly, two or three times a day, the projects change. So just being in the industry, you had multiple different projects and it was all problem solving. And you know, if you could make somebody's day by taking something that was broken or didn't work correctly and put it back together, put it, make it work, and they didn't have to go buy something new, I think that's really where it all started.

Carl Hutchinson: I guess what kept me in it, that's a totally different thing because I've tried to get out of this industry several times and I think this industry has teeth. Once you're in it and you're ingrained into it there's a huge draw to it, but there's also a huge security to this industry that, you know, the 40 years that I've been in it now I've pretty much always had a job.

Carl Hutchinson: I've always. Had security. I've always been in a relatively decent position of making money and having insurance and days off and vacations and things of that nature to where I've seen a lot of people around us. In other industries they don't have that. And especially when COVID hit, it was like, well, our industry was blessed and, you know, we had a job.

Carl Hutchinson: We didn't have to worry about, you know, staying home. And I mean, I guess that's what kept me in it is once you're in it and you understand it, and you have a little bit of a passion for, I don't wanna say just the automotive portion of it, but it's the people in the automotive portion of it, it's a steady customers that come through.

Carl Hutchinson: And, you know, just this past, oh, two weeks, I've had two. 30 year customers come through our doors. And to see them to know that I, as a technician worked on their car 30 years ago and they're still with us through all these years is that's fantastic to see that. So I think that's what keeps me in it more than anything is is the people of it, you know, just having that ability to make somebody's life and honestly change somebody's life in it or make it for the better, just have a part of it.

Carl Hutchinson: So that long answer to a short question, I guess,

Kent Bullard: Carl, was there a specific moment where you had to make the decision or where you made the decision Oh, ly, that this was where you're gonna stay?

Carl Hutchinson: Oh, absolutely. So this is how ignorant I was being in this industry. You know, I didn't realize I was being groomed.

Carl Hutchinson: To purchase the business that I was in. I actually worked for a good friend of mine for many years, and he was the owner of the business and he was grooming me to, to buy it. And I had no idea, you know, just I hate to say I'm using those same tactics on our employees now as we go along, just, you know, advance 'em along, give them a little more, and but I was being groomed.

Carl Hutchinson: And one day he came to me and he says would you like to own this business? And I thought, oh heck no. No way. Why would I wanna own this business? I mean, I'm very happy with the idea of, I, you know, I show up early in the morning, do my thing all day long, lock the door at night and go home. And I'm pretty happy.

Carl Hutchinson: And at that point in time. I thought I was actually going to get out of the industry. I had a passion to, to be in the home industry and building homes and things of that nature, and we were doing some of that on the side. Well, that was 2005, 2006, 2007, all in those years. And he sold the business to somebody that I could not work for.

Carl Hutchinson: And I didn't think that there was people out there that I could not work for, and I just, I could not work for this gentleman. The ethics, the they were not my ethics. The morals were not my morals, that the culture changed overnight and it really sucked. So at that point in time, I had to make a decision.

Carl Hutchinson: I either have to change industries. Or I've gotta figure this out. Well, by this time it's 2007 in the the sections there. And the housing industry comes to a stre and halt. And all of my dreams that I thought I had were just gone. And I found myself in an ultimatum that I can't work for somebody.

Carl Hutchinson: And so I went to this new owner and gave him an ultimatum. And then again, this is how ignorant I am. You know, when you're not the boss, you don't give the boss an ultimatum. Because the boss, I couldn't leave. So, so I found myself having to stand my ground and I had to leave which was the right thing to do.

Carl Hutchinson: So, 2008, I didn't realize that jobs were not available. And, you know, I wound up going to work for another competitor, which was a good and bad thing. I realized there was somebody else that I could not work for, but he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot of things I didn't know, and I thought I knew a lot, but he taught me a lot.

Carl Hutchinson: But I guess to, to answer the question, that's when I had to make the decision is right then is when I realized I could not work for somebody else. That the way that I had been brought up in this industry and the way that I wanted to operate a business and was not allowed to anymore. The only way to do it was to work for ourselves.

Carl Hutchinson: And the funny story is I was I was really looking for a job I needed to get out of where I was at. It was such a bad place, such a toxic place that I had to get out of there. And my mental and physical whole world was crashing. So I was just dialing everybody that I had in my index, anybody that I knew that was in the automotive world, I said, look, I'm looking for a job.

Carl Hutchinson: I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I gotta get outta where I'm at. I'll be a technician again. I'll do anything. I gotta get my head cleared. And this one guy that I called, he says, well, there's no jobs here. Oh. So the one and only time that I'd ever said this was I'm looking for a job or a business to buy.

Carl Hutchinson: I only said it once. He said, there's no jobs here, but I think the business is for sale. And I said, can you hand the phone to the owner? Can I talk to them? By the end of the day, I'd already, I toured through their shop and realized there was opportunity and then just kind of make the rest of the story short.

Carl Hutchinson: And about six months we became owners of that business. And that's honestly, that's when we had to make the decision if we were gonna do something, I had to do what I knew and this is what I knew. And I thought I knew a lot until I bought the business and then realized I don't know anything. It just.

Kent Bullard: Well, Carl, I gotta commend you for, you know, having the moral courage and the moral fortitude to stand your ground on that. I think a lot of people don't, and it leads to a very, a world that is lacking for sure. But I wrote down here, you know, it, you you decided to be the good you wanted to see in the world.

Carl Hutchinson: That's,

Kent Bullard: and that's

Carl Hutchinson: true. I mean, that's, so I'd worked for two people that I thought were very unethical and your ethics don't allow you to do that. Just because you need groceries and pay your mortgage and, you know, send your kids to school those kinds of things doesn't mean you can trash your ethics.

Carl Hutchinson: And I was really struggling with that, with both places that I was working, that just, it was a job. They were good paying jobs, but I couldn't stay. I just couldn't stay. And that was, so that was one of the driving things about why we wanted to do what we're doing and the way that we're doing it is that we wanted to make sure that we were on the up and up, that every decision that we made, that if we saw the customer in the grocery store, we wanted to be able to walk up to them.

Carl Hutchinson: We wanted to be able to have a conversation instead of it having to turn, walk away, or, you know, have people call your lawyer. I mean, I couldn't tell you how many times I heard that well just call my lawyer or sue me or something like that. That's not the world I wanna live in. That's not the way we wanted to run business.

Kent Bullard: So do you think that that tension or that moral tension that you were experiencing led you to seek, you know, high performance or people development driven practices in your business?

Carl Hutchinson: Now? Yes. Then no. Like I said, we didn't know what the heck we were doing. I thought all these years of experience, I knew everything.

Carl Hutchinson: And holy cow, once, once you become the owner, you don't know nothing. It took a long time for us to figure it out. And really, the blessing is you start surrounding yourself with people that know way more than you do, and you trust them and they, you allow them to push you. And then that's where all of a sudden you start changing your performance.

Carl Hutchinson: And when you start changing your performance, you start changing everybody else's performance around you. Now it's a little different now. I think our baseline expectations are much higher than the majority of the industry. And that's just our baseline. You know, what we consider a. What other people would consider be to be very good, talented people.

Carl Hutchinson: We feel like these are just basic places to start, and that's probably one of the biggest challenges for us now as we go into this. More of a high performance attitude or mindset and culture is weeding out those that that, that don't wanna play. They just don't wanna be here.

Kent Bullard: So I want to ask Michael, so the companies that know that they want to invest in, you know, the high performance or the people development, what are some of the things that they will experience when they don't have those pieces in place?

Michael Smith: You know, our industry is really a long history of focusing on the sales transaction at the front desk, the work that's done in the back shop, that it's accurate enough not to come back and cost a lot of money to refix, if you will, and running the basic financials just to try to be as profitable as possible.

Michael Smith: And you know what? Happened in the last 20, 25 years was that there was a lot of work done outside of our industry about humans and, you know, how do humans work and why do they work the way they do? And some of the science goes back many decades. But the work that was put together, and I had the fun and fortune of being in the middle of some of that, was trying to bring it forward and start to understand that humans are such a competitive factor in a business.

Michael Smith: And so, Kent, this is a setup to the answer to your question. Most people are either come at this human-centric people productivity competitive advantage of humans model. They come at it from a different philosophy more often than they do from a business experience, especially in our industry. And when they come to this and start looking around and realizing that human beings turned on outperform.

Michael Smith: All the rest of the, sort of the business models that have come before it. The answer to your question is what people who don't get excited about this get is what I guess you'd call sort of average performance and average, you know, organizational structure and average relationships with their people and that are on their teams and with their customers.

Michael Smith: And so it's kind of interesting when, like, when I met Carl and we started talking to each other Carl's had this in his heart. Carl, and I'd love you to speak to this a little bit. You had this in your thought process for quite a while, and I don't know how you got there from here, Garrett. It happened before I showed up in your life and we connected with each other and I'm bringing science to the table and some methodology and supporting you and, you know, development.

Michael Smith: Tools and that kind of thing. But you were on this track before that, and so Kent, that's kind of, kind of the answer. The majority of the industry is still focused on sales and production and the human side's a little bit new for us anyway. So Carl, would you take us there? How did you get there from working in the industry in a sort of an average kind of a way?

Michael Smith: What brought it to you in the first place? Was it fate? Like you mentioned that at the beginning. So,

Carl Hutchinson: There's probably several factors into it. I think that I think like-minded people draw like-minded people. You start running in groups and as you hire you start hiring people that think and act along the same lines.

Carl Hutchinson: So, we've not mastered this by no means. Honestly, we're, I think we're in the rebuilding stage of this more than anything 'cause I think I am. Probably the same as so many other business owners out there that have been complacent over the years, and especially in the last five or six years as talent is hard to get or just anybody is hard to get and you hire the best of available.

Carl Hutchinson: They may not be the best, but they're the best available. And then you start making concessions and you have a hard time weeding things out. So I, I think we, we started early on just really trying to find people that had the same viewpoints as much as possible. And that's a challenge 'cause you, you start overlooking people that just have a great resume.

Carl Hutchinson: Just because they did great things, one other place doesn't mean they're gonna do great things here. Or they might do a lot of production for you and they might do a lot of sales for you, but they do a lot of damage for you also. And that's a real challenge when you start hiring these people and then having to let them go and people don't understand the rest of your staffing doesn't understand and really you can't speak to it as to why, you know, to the technical pieces of it.

Carl Hutchinson: But that, that's a real challenge when they ask, well why did you let such and such go? And it's like, well, I can't speak to it, but he just didn't fit our culture. And that's a challenge, you know, when they start running customers off or it's more of a me, attitude as opposed to a we attitude when it's all about me and what I want, what I need, as opposed to what we need.

Carl Hutchinson: That those are the tough things. And that's, and we're still in that rebuilding. And honestly as we got more and more into this culture change, 'cause we thought we had a pretty good culture to begin with. Once we stepped it up a little bit, we were really amazed at how many people washed out.

Carl Hutchinson: And people that shocked me. I mean, people that I really trusted and really was trying to build a program around. And I think that's probably one of the things that's held us back or set us back more than anything, because I really wanted to be further along in the, in this business life that, you know, some of the people washed out that I was really trusting.

Carl Hutchinson: They just, they didn't see it. They just they couldn't get out of their way and see the bigger picture. So, so that's what we're What do you

Kent Bullard: think I'd love to dive into that because I think a lot of businesses run into this hurdle when they start realizing that I need to be investing in more than just competency.

Kent Bullard: Right. And you've gotta deal with that reconciliation of of competency versus attitude. You know, everybody hears it higher for attitude versus Yeah. But what does that actually mean? Right? I mean, it's so much deeper than that, but what is it like when you're transitioning your team from kind of, Hey, we've got a good culture to now this more scientifically driven approach to human development?

Carl Hutchinson: I don't know that I'm not sure that I can speak to that really well. You know, I, I think the warning, and I think Michael's probably warned us all, you start holding people accountable to do the things that need to be done and in a manner that you'd like them to be done. And either they get on the bus or they don't get on the bus.

Carl Hutchinson: And to, that was one of the biggest shocks to me anyway, is I knew some were going to go and that was okay, but then the others went and it's like, wow, I didn't see that coming. So I'm not real sure.

Kent Bullard: Well, Michael, what do you what happens? So when you start holding people accountable to the next level Sure. To basically saying, I know that you have a much higher potential, and I'd love to Right. Make sure that you meet it.

Michael Smith: Yeah. I'll preface this. It's, it doesn't start with accountability. It ends with accountability.

Michael Smith: And Carl, we've talked about quite a bit in the group that we're in too about responsibility and authority. And then accountability and people are wired to want more responsibility. I mean, that's science. Social science shows that people thrive when they're growing and when they're doing more and they're achieving and they're champions.

Michael Smith: And so they're, they want it. They need it inside. And so when we show up and say, Hey, we think we'd like to do something more together with you, once they sign onto that's it. That's exciting intellectually, right? Then we turn around and say, okay, we're gonna give you the authority behind that.

Michael Smith: It's not like I'm gonna sit there and watch you. You go do this new thing, and if you need some help. Come talk to me. Then they go off and start doing that. Here's what inevitably happens is they bump into difficulties in the new thing. Theoretically, they're over the other side of their comfort zone in a space they haven't been before.

Michael Smith: They're a little bit nervous, and oftentimes people just pull back and maybe stop trying or they back off and they don't try as hard or whatever. That's when the accountability part kicks in, is you need to be real close to them at the beginning when they're nervous about whether they're gonna make it or not, and that.

Michael Smith: Process of self challenge. And I'm coming back to the topic here. You know, it's a surprise sometimes that people will pay all the intellectual, all the verbal you know, say the right words and say, I really want to grow. I wanna do all this stuff. And then when you give them the right to do that, they scare themselves.

Michael Smith: They go back to old tapes that they heard when they were kids, oh, you're not very smart, or, you're gonna have a hard time with this, or whatever. They tried to learn things before and it didn't go well for them. And so there's all kinds of stuff creeps up into their mind and their and into their emotions out of the past.

Michael Smith: And then they decide that they're gonna slow down a little bit. And then, and that's really the challenge, right? Carl? Say you come to a point where some people. Given the opportunity to step up and swing for the fences, step up, and then they step back from the batter's box and they tap their bottom of their shoes again.

Michael Smith: They line up and then they gotta back up and do their grip thing. And they just, this is, you end up with this little dance and it's a surprise. I'm always surprised by the people that decide not to compete, right? They just step back and say, I don't wanna be the best that I can be. And there's lots of reasons for it, and we can all go forward, but some people choose not to for all kinds of different reasons.

Michael Smith: So what,

Kent Bullard: Michael, what's the, I mean, 'cause any time that you are pushing yourself to be better, you're gonna be in areas of discomfort, right? New things that you have to learn. What. Is different about the ones who put themselves in that space and pull back versus the ones who put themselves in that space and lean into it?

Kent Bullard: Yeah, I

Michael Smith: mean, I, Kent, that's a great question. I, if you asked anybody, Hey, would you like to play on a championship team and win all the time? Everybody would say, well, yeah, that would be cool. That'd be really fun to do that. It's like, okay, here's what it means. You have to put yourself out there and you have to challenge yourself, and you have to be humble and people have to be able to coach you and you have to, you know, you have to swing for the fences and you have to help other people do the same thing.

Michael Smith: And by the way, when you're trying something you haven't done before, you're gonna fall on your face a lot. And that might not feel real good. And some people are a little bit low on self-esteem from the way they were raised, and it's hard for them to fall down. And it's not really about what we're gonna say about 'em, it's what they say to themselves.

Michael Smith: And if they had, you know, people that told them in their earlier life they weren't gonna amount to much or they was gonna, they were gonna have to work hard to, you know, blah, blah, blah. Then when they go try something new and they fall down, that just validates those expectations that were set in their lives earlier on.

Michael Smith: And that's hard for them because it's like, I'm in tender territory now. This is stuff that I'm not comfortable with. And so again, they'll either step up and decide, no, you know what? Carl's behind me. This is the time we're gonna do this. The organization wants me to do this inside. I know I want it and I need it, and I'm gonna fight through this until I win.

Michael Smith: And Carl, we've been all down, up and down this road with all kinds of people. Once they start to get used to the fact that they can challenge themselves and actually succeed, then it becomes a little bit addictive. Right? It's kind of fun to say, Hey, I wonder what I can do next. Hey, I wonder what I can do next.

Michael Smith: And once you get that under your skin, then it's almost like they're striving for more and more. And that's, and this is back to our. First accountability question. You don't have to hold people accountable who are self-driving for continuous growth and improvement. They gotta make that transition though.

Michael Smith: They gotta get over that hump and into that self-motivated zone. Or once they do that, then, and those are the people that don't make it over that hump, that end up washing out, right? They're just, you chase 'em, you try to help 'em, you encourage 'em, you put your arm around them, occasionally you have to yell at 'em 'cause they're doing something really stupid to sabotage themselves, to keep you from, you know, believing in them.

Michael Smith: All kinds of weird stuff happens. But it's really interesting how the people who do want to go forward then just take that ball and run with it. And at some point there's self-correcting too. You bring in a dead new employee or you've got that one last employee who's not gonna play the team's all over them.

Michael Smith: And I don't mean in a mean way, but they're like, come on, you can do better than that. And at some point when they get frustrated with them, 'cause they're not gonna try and they're not gonna go forward, the team will turn to you and say it's time. It's time to get rid of this person. It's time to replace 'em.

Michael Smith: And by the way, while you're out there, go bring back another champion to join the team, right? So another star player who wants to play on the team, not just a rockstar, but a rockstar team player. And that it just cha, the culture changes. It's a beautiful thing to see.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah, I think you said it much better than I, sorry, Kent, I didn't mean to jump in there, but No worries.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, the ones that, that have jumped in and said, yeah, I want that and I'll do it. Have succeeded. And yes, we've already seen those kinds of things come along. Instead of saying some of the things like can you help me with this? Or what do you think? It's, this is what I've done, this is the action that we're gonna take.

Carl Hutchinson: This is, oh, I screwed this up, but we're fixing this and as opposed to bail me out of trouble, or I don't wanna, you know, we learned a lot of that.

Michael Smith: Go ahead and make me go ahead and make me right. Yeah,

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, I think you said, you know, you said it pretty well. I mean, there's a, I think everybody wants it until they get, get it, and then when they get it, then it's easier to revert back.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, it's, so, I gotta call it ownership mentality. Because if you owned it, you can't walk away from it. I mean, really you can't walk away from it. I mean, we could not walk away from it. It was, there was, failure was not an option. Hard, hard work was a great option. Working long hours was options.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, bringing in counsel was options. I mean, all the failure was not an option. So, we learned a lot. And I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of is that to fail and learn as opposed to just go, I'm done. I'm out.

Michael Smith: Let me jump on that for just a second, Kent, and then I'll turn it back to you.

Michael Smith: That failure is not an option. Model is something owners know very well because it's your house that's leveraged to buy the business in the first place or whatever. You can't just decide to take another job, right? You've got to make this thing work. And I'll say this though, the reason I brought this up was something you said.

Michael Smith: That's what happens in the mind of a person who decides to actively become a master. They develop this mindset to say, failure is not an option. It's like, I get it now and I'm gonna optimize my life, and I'm choosing not to live below my potential. And I don't know what the limit is, but I'm gonna start getting out there and just.

Michael Smith: Kitten into it, and it's not good enough for me to be the same as everybody else anymore the way I used to be. I'm gonna go beyond that and I'm not gonna live that way. Right. And that it's almost becomes a failure is not an option mentality, even though they don't own the business. Right? It's like, I'm gonna become a master or die trying.

Michael Smith: But then they do. All of a sudden it's like, well, geez, if I can do that, what else could I do? Hey, what's the next level up? Here's a huge step forward. I'll take it. I'm stepping into it. Then they do that too, and they're like, oh my God, I wonder what I could do next. And the leaps start to become exponential.

Michael Smith: They're little bitty steps at first, but then it's a big step, and then it's a really big step, and it's like, and shoot for the stars. What could I do? Well, this is the really big one. And then they go do that too. It's like, wow. And now they're in a pipeline for themselves. They do it themselves and it's a beautiful thing to see.

Michael Smith: It really is.

Kent Bullard: I, I have a working theory. Just bear with me. Here we go. As we were going through this, I'm like trying to diagnose what are some of the key differences? And I really like, you know, I think that those that do versus those that don't, they view failure differently. They have a different perspective of what failure is.

Kent Bullard: Absolutely. And the purpose of failure. And Carl, you put it. You put it beautifully. I screwed up, but this is how I'm fixing it, right? Yeah. Versus I screwed up. What do I do now? Can you save me from this? You know? 'cause that's when you really look at it and go, look, this is my problem and it's my responsibility.

Kent Bullard: I'm the one that's, that has the authority over the decisions on this. And I know that my team is gonna hold me accountable to the solution of it. And fully understanding that, you know, fail and learn. Right? So there was, rather than fail and secede

Carl Hutchinson: short story, that, and my wife's walking back and forth, they

Carl Hutchinson: want to hear this, but it's so my story.

Carl Hutchinson: So

Carl Hutchinson: she said one time, she said, you don't ever screw anything up. I don't know. I never see anything that you screw up. I said, oh my God,

Carl Hutchinson: you don't have many things I screw up. I just don't tell everybody. That's right.

Michael Smith: And really, it's a quiet, it's a quiet experience, right. I just fix it before

Carl Hutchinson: anybody

Michael Smith: else.

Michael Smith: That's why I go to work early to get it all fixed before the next day starts.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. That's why I work so hard. I wanna fix, I gotta cover that up before anybody sees that. So, but really that, I think that's what we're looking for

Carl Hutchinson: In people that we wanna put in leadership positions and the people that we want to advance is, you know, they're not afraid to push the button and go, oh, what does that do?

Carl Hutchinson: You know, oh crap, just nap. Right? Pull the plug and let's reset this thing. But I think that's what we're looking for in people to do that and not be afraid to take chances and. To mess stuff up and really to fix it and really going back to this leadership mentality kind of thing, and to give people enough rope to do those things and to stay out of their way.

Carl Hutchinson: That has been the biggest challenge for me. And as I talk to our emerging leaders 'cause I, I keep getting this question about, well, what do you do when others don't do the exactly the way that you want it done? And it's like, man, you gotta give them some space. You just gotta let 'em, you gotta let 'em fail to learn.

Carl Hutchinson: And that's the only way you're gonna be able to do that too. And that's really tough, especially for those of us that are in this industry. 'cause I hate to say this industry is a very precise industry. It is not an industry of, oh, take two aspirins and call me in the morning or in time it will get better.

Carl Hutchinson: It's either is or isn't in this industry and we have very little grace in this industry or forgiveness, and that's, it's a real challenge.

Kent Bullard: I've always had this thought and I've never been a technician, but I know that a lot of technicians put a lot of value in whether or not they have the answer.

Carl Hutchinson: Oh, absolutely. That they fix the

Kent Bullard: problem that's in front of them, right? But then when it comes to an owner in the position where they're training and bringing technicians on board, they're like, well, I need them to be up here. And it's like, well, they didn't have the same level of years of experience and the opportunity to fail like you did.

Kent Bullard: And you know, oftentimes in classes I'll say, how many of you guys have, you know, busted apart or done this? Or, you know, a lot of hands go up and it's like there was somebody there that gave you the grace to make those mistakes. I wrote down here, you know, failure is 'cause I always view failure as not the opposite of success, right?

Kent Bullard: So here, done here, failure is the cost for competence. And when you're striving for success, I mean, mistakes are gonna happen. And it's how you deal with those things.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. I think you have to fail. I mean, if you're not failing, you're not trying. It's the way I look at it. And to me. There's no I don't know how to say this.

Carl Hutchinson: It's not a bad thing to fail. It's a bad thing to quit. That's probably not the right way to say it, but

Michael Smith: that's a good way to say it.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, I don't mind people failing 'cause those are learning lessons and it's like, well always come away with, well, we're not gonna do that way next time. Or now we know, or, there's so many of these lessons in this industry that you can't tell somebody.

Carl Hutchinson: You have to live through them. And that's some of the challenges that we're having with some of our emerging leaders was, you know, I could have told you what was gonna happen, but you wouldn't have believed me until it happened. And then you're on the other side of it, and then you can see, oh, now I understand what happened.

Carl Hutchinson: And you're right, I wouldn't have believed you if you would've told me this was gonna happen, but this is what you have to do. So sometimes you have to let 'em go through it and to learn that lesson. And then they have that basis for the next one. The ones that get me are the ones that quit. You know, they're just, no, I failed. I'm done. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna try again. I'm not gonna put myself out there. And the, those people, I don't know I'm not interested in putting a lot of sweat equity into those types of individuals. I'll help just about anybody that wants to help themselves.

Carl Hutchinson: If they wanna learn, if they wanna do, if they want to grow, if they want, I'll take chances on people. If they have a desire and a passion to do something, and I think that's what we should be doing. 'cause you never know there's a diamond out there that just needs to be polished up somewhere.

Carl Hutchinson: Somebody spent a lot of time with me to give here, so I think we need to pass that on to the others.

Michael Smith: You know, if you see, and I'll add to this, if you see failure as a mistake or you see failure as some kind of a character weakness or a an indication to others that you're not all, that you are trying to present yourself to be.

Michael Smith: If that's what failure is, then it's gonna be a painful, avoidable, you know, try to avoid it thing. If there's an emotional, an emotionally dispassionate approach to failure and say, look, I'm a master. And I'm a master in training and I'm gonna continue to master more and more things in my personal and professional life.

Michael Smith: And failure for me is nothing but an attempt at something I haven't done before that I'm gonna conquer. If I miss it this time, I'll try again. If I miss it that time, I'll try till I get it. And once I got it. And so failure isn't a mistake. Failure is a learning curve. Yes. Experience. And so then you can step back and you can make it intellectual and set the emotional part aside.

Michael Smith: You can be frustrated all you want, but don't take it personally. Right. It's like, it's not like, right. You as a human being have failed because you didn't finish this properly. It's just one more, one more chip on the pathway to getting it right and that, that. That mindset shift is huge for this path to mastery.

Michael Smith: It's huge because that's what allows people to say, Carl's not gonna think less of me. I work for him. He told me to take a chance. I tried my best. I failed. I'm gonna beat myself up more than you. I know you, I, you know, you, and again, as long as I'm trying and learning, you'll stand with me indefinitely.

Michael Smith: It's when I stop and lock up and say, oh, this is stupid. I'm not gonna learn. Or, you know what? I hate this and you know, I'm gonna just stay stuck or whatever. That's I'm with you. That's when I look at people and say, I don't know how I can help you at this point, because as long as you're trying this path is endless.

Michael Smith: And as soon as you master something, pick something else that's parallel to it. Pick something else. That's interesting. Add that to it. This is a lifetime journey. Endless learning opportunities and I'm with you. So it's that emotionally dispassionate approach that really helps a lot. So if anybody's stuck in that self separate your self-esteem if you can from the failure in a moment and realize it's just a learning moment.

Michael Smith: So,

Kent Bullard: thank you Michael. I needed that personally. Most of us

Michael Smith: do. Me too, by the way. Calm me. We, that's the thing

Kent Bullard: is like a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is like practice. It takes practice. Even I struggle with a lot of this stuff, you know, and just going, oh, I wanna quit, or I have these negative thoughts and I'm like, well, no, I can't.

Kent Bullard: I gotta get back up, dust myself off and keep going at it, you know? Yeah. I wanna put a pin in this. Just, I love this topic, but I wanna put a pin in it because I wanna move towards you know, looking at Carl, you know, what are some of the strategies or the philosophies that you have found have been effective for developing your talent?

Carl Hutchinson: Wow. Strategies. I really didn't know much about strategies until I met Michael. And I'm still learning about strategies. Most of the rest of it is just learning the hard way developing people. You know, you, I don't know. We come from an industry that has come so far in the last really 20 years, but in the last 40 or 50 years, it's really come a long ways.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, it's just the, we've cleaned up the industry, we've been become professional. You know, there's so much of that. The strategy is man,

Carl Hutchinson: probably to know them more than what I would've ever known them in the past, and I still struggle with that. And really knowing in depth. I think we have a surface level of knowing our employees and then maybe the second step down. We know 'em, maybe we know their kids' names or something like that.

Carl Hutchinson: But to really get to know that the really inner passions that's one of the challenges that I'm working with is to really, to get to know my employees better. Screaming and yelling. That's not a strategy that, that we done that once and that doesn't work both ways to me out from me.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. It doesn't work. I think trying to pick the right people, asking the right questions and if I can marry up what they want to do with what I need done is probably one of the biggest challenges. 'cause we've hired a lot of people in the past that we knew were not five year people. They were not 10 year people.

Carl Hutchinson: Which was okay to fill a spot to get us going, to get them going, to get them from A to B. But if they want to go on and be an architect, if they want to go on and be a lawyer, if they want to go on and be something else, and they need us for a short period of time, I think that's, we've done that. I'm still working on the strategies.

Carl Hutchinson: I think that's the best thing I can say is I don't know that I'm on my way to mastery, let me put it that way. We'll put the yet in there.

Kent Bullard: So well, let's look at let's take a pivot here. Then we can go onto another subject. Let's take a look at, you know, I mean, you're actively hiring and finding.

Kent Bullard: Team members to, to expand, you know, complete automotive and what you guys do. What are some of the unique qualities or skills that you tend to prioritize for a high performing team versus, or I guess above and beyond the competencies or the technical skills? Yeah,

Carl Hutchinson: and I'm trying to come up with some scenarios as to the things that we've hired to and the things that we've passed over.

Carl Hutchinson: I guess that falls into the strategic planning portion of it more than anything is I put a job offer out to a gentleman that had all of the credentials that really could have been a production machine for us, and I had to withdraw that job offer. The more we thought about it, the more we realized this was not.

Carl Hutchinson: A long term thing, and I didn't wanna do that for our team, and I didn't wanna do that for him. So that was the conversation that we had. So I think that falls into that category of, you know, just because they have all the credentials and they can come in and do, doesn't mean that they're going to be the right person for everybody else and for our long-term growth.

Carl Hutchinson: So I think that falls into that being selective and being more strategic there. I use the word in a sentence.

Kent Bullard: Does it hurt having to say no to somebody who looks really good on paper? It

Carl Hutchinson: really does. I mean, and I think I can say this for about every shop owner out there, probably every business owner out there, it doesn't matter that when you get somebody that has all of their credentials, you want so badly to hire that person that you actually make them the what you want them to be, as opposed to what they really are.

Carl Hutchinson: And that's a real challenge. 'cause that's where you have to have people around you going, yeah, I don't like the way he walked in. I don't like the way they talk to us as they come into the interview. I don't like the way they were dressed. I don't, you know, they, they see all the things you don't see because you're blinded because of the resume and.

Carl Hutchinson: What you need to get done. And you're tired of hiring, interviewing and it's like, man, I had to pass over somebody else. And then you think, well, I'm gonna hire somebody that's of a lesser caliber, but you don't know. You've not met that other person yet. So I think that's some of the strategic, if I can keep going back, I'm gonna learn this word at some point, I'm wanna get into my brain.

Carl Hutchinson: That yeah,

Kent Bullard: It's like good relationship advice, right? Yeah. You know, sometimes you just like the idea of them, you romanticize or fantasize this version of them that could just fit into your life so well and you don't look at them as a human being. And I think that's one thing, you know, especially in my interviews, in my, filters, right? Yeah. Is to ask specific questions so that I am trying to hit as many of my own biases as I can with logic, right? Yes. Yeah. Is this, you know, we look at a personality profile, there's gonna be this discrepancy here. How is that gonna play into the dynamic of my team? And frankly, if that were turned up to 11, how bad could that be?

Kent Bullard: Right? It just, it's the same as I would look at some of the good qualities and turn those up to 11. What would happen if I Right. Was able to put them in a position where they were using all of this. Right. What could that do for the business? Yeah. And that takes a lot of thought and consideration, not only from yourself, but also with your team.

Kent Bullard: And I think there's a lot of people who. Are just like, I need to put a body in the seat and so that I can get back to trying to, you know, I think I've said that keep bailing water out of the boat. Right? I think

Carl Hutchinson: I've said that a few times. I just need somebody here that can

Carl Hutchinson: do something. But yeah it's a real challenge, you know, and we've learned to ask more people-centric questions than maybe process procedural questions.

Carl Hutchinson: And, you know, one of my things as of late as I'm trying to get this leadership team to grow is I've handed off that hiring portion. So to let them do the interviews on the technical aspects, to let them do the interviews on the positional aspects. I may do some of the preliminary type of stuff.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, I may go through and look through resumes and go, yeah, this stack. And this stack? No. And and I may do some of the initial phone interviews to say, yeah, let's get this person in or not. But you know, I'm trying to ask more of the, I guess, the intellectual questions and more the deep thinking questions.

Carl Hutchinson: And one of the questions that I've asked over the years, and I really was surprised at how much effect it has on decision making is I asked them what their hobbies are and if they can't answer quickly, that's really not a good candidate. And it really amazed me that was such a defining question that if they don't have a hobby or a release or a passion for something other than what they're doing it was a big indicator and I was really surprised that it was such a big indicator.

Carl Hutchinson: 'cause the ones that really didn't have a hobby, they were pretty bl pretty just.

Kent Bullard: So, so let me ask you, does it matter what the hobby is?

Carl Hutchinson: Not really. I mean, you would think people that are in the automotive industry, that would be their hobby. And it's the good ones that's really not their hobby. And it's amazing, whether it's RC cars or whether it's archery, or whether it's horses, or whether it's motorcycle or motocross or whatever.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, the list is endless. Artist dancing, I mean, that was, that's the one that blew my mind. I hired this young man that when I asked him what his hobby was, he said, dancing. It's like, dude, you're 19 years old. Dancing is your hobby. He says, absolutely. I says, well, what kind of dancing? And then he rattled off stuff I'd never heard of.

Carl Hutchinson: And it's like, you're, it, I mean, but I was really shocked that was such an indicator that it gave me the idea that there, there was more to the person than just the job. And if you're just showing up here and you're going home and sitting in front of the television or you're, you know, you don't have another interest.

Carl Hutchinson: There's no driving. And I was really shocked that question was such a game changer as opposed to a lot of the other questions.

Kent Bullard: Michael, I wanna throw it over to you 'cause I just had a thought and I wanna ask a question here. So bear with me as I kind of flesh this out. Okay? Sure. Looking at this question, Carl do you think, Michael, that it has to do with the fact that the people who don't have these extracurriculars or these hobbies are somewhat locked?

Kent Bullard: Yep. I think

Carl Hutchinson: you're getting

Kent Bullard: it.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah, I think you're getting it too. Yeah. They're,

Kent Bullard: they're locked in this space where they're not cognitively flexible and that prevents progress or growth. So an evidence marker to say that this is gonna be somebody that is gonna be hard to invest in their own personal benefit and development just because they don't have, like, they are already inflexible with their life.

Kent Bullard: They're doing this and this, and that's it. I don't know if that is a great question there, but I don't know. I don't wanna answer

Carl Hutchinson: for Michael, but I just. The more I think about it it's more of like the critical thinking. Like if you have horses and man, they're just problem solving all over the place with horses.

Carl Hutchinson: So if you have horses and you're trying to train them and you're trying to get them to do something, you're constantly just on the this thinking thing. RC cars or archery, I'm just thinking all these things. All of 'em have critical thinking. I mean, the hobbies that I have, there's a lot of critical thinking in it and problem solving.

Carl Hutchinson: And you're always challenging yourself to do something more, go places different. And so I really think there's something to that, that those are the ones that I kind of think set, are set apart. That they're already on a path. That if they're doing something like that, then they're teachable then they're.

Carl Hutchinson: Maybe they're more apt to take on that extra thing and not really know what the heck they're doing.

Michael Smith: And yeah, and I'd absolutely agree with that. And I would I'll add this to it, and sorry that my intercon internet connection this afternoon is just a tad unstable, so I caught most of that. Now, you know, I'll say this.

Michael Smith: We live our life in habits and Carl, we've talked about this and some of the stuff we studied together, we are 90% habitual. As average human beings. And so the point is we groove our lives in ways that worked in the past, and then we tend to stick with it because it's energy efficient, it's time efficient, it's, you know, it's success efficient.

Michael Smith: I know if I do it again, I'm probably gonna succeed. And so in some ways, all, every single one of us gets lazy. And whatever we habitually tracked is what we tend to continue to do. And so you can track sitting on a couch and playing video games with every ounce of free time you have. Or you can track, you know, dating your girlfriend, turns into your wife, and you spend all of your life focusing on just one person.

Michael Smith: And that's all you do outside of work too. You can track anything you want to in terms of this habitual model. And so I'm just sort of bringing the psychology behind what you guys are talking about. You can track learning too. You can become a learning, mastering being, and you can habituate that and you can then be interested in trying new things and doing hobbies and, you know, getting good at something.

Michael Smith: And you can have one hobby, or you can have a hobby for a while and then abandon it. I think those of you who know me know how much I think of da Vinci and how he would just grab some very strange challenge and work it, fail at it, work it, fail at it, work it until he mastered it, and then when he was sufficiently.

Michael Smith: Pleased with his level of progress. He'd say, okay, that's enough. I consider that I've mastered this particular thing. And then he'd turn around and pick up some equally difficult, impossible thing, and he'd take that on until he mastered it. And that, you know, that's the person you kind of, in some ways want to hire.

Michael Smith: Right? A da Vinci, of course, if he was still here. But beyond that, people who are just ready to try new things and say, you know what? I love this process of learning. I'm not afraid to fail, and I think it's great to do new things together. 'cause frankly, as a business owner in the industry that we're in, you can learn to run the operation better.

Michael Smith: If you're in the back shop, you can learn more about what happens at the front desk. If you're an owner, you can learn more finance, you can learn more psychology. If you're in the customer studying business, you can all figure out. What's happening in your community and in your particular unique customer base and watching the vehicles change?

Michael Smith: There is an endless number of things. There are an endless number of things that we can study and learn in our industry to be at the top of the game. And, you know, that's the thing. Are they habituated to couch sitting or are they habituated to the learning curve and to being excited? And that's where the hobbies would lean in dancing and motorcycle riding on the weekends and whatever, right.

Michael Smith: Whatever their things are. I, so I join you in that. There's a lot of psychology behind what you guys are talking about finding the champions in preparation. Right.

Kent Bullard: I wanna reiterate the question now that I've had a chance to think about it. So for now that we've

Michael Smith: the wrong question.

Kent Bullard: Now that we've answered the question, I'd love to reiterate the question. And we'll do this in post, we'll put it back in the beginning, but the question really is, do you think that the hobby question is related to the cognitive inflexibility of somebody who you are going to invest a lot of time and energy in developing and could bear evidence to whether or not there's somebody who can view that potential and pursue it?

Carl Hutchinson: I'll say yes. I mean, that's the short answer, just for the simple fact that I have passed over potential employees based on that answer. I mean, that's the short of it because if they don't have a driving interest it's a real challenge. I mean, that's just been my experience is it's a real challenge to get them to do anything that I need them to do and Right.

Carl Hutchinson: It's almost like a qualifying question as opposed to, you know, do you have a driver's license? We have to have a driver's license to, to work in this industry. It's like, do you have a hobby? And that ought to be like question number two, makes this interview really short. I don't know. But yes I think to me it does, and I don't know about to everybody else, but to me it does because it, I find it a real challenge to, to get somebody to go to where I feel like they can go or where I need them to go if they don't have that teachable or that ability to problem solve, learn self-motivated, I mean, those kinds of things.

Carl Hutchinson: Because I think that's what comes from hobbies. I mean, I mean, you think about it, if you wanna fly RC airplanes, there's a whole lot of stuff you gotta know. I mean. Way more than I ever thought about knowing. Like you just can't fly them any day. I mean, just because you're day off, that doesn't mean you can fly them that day.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, there's a lot of things that go into it, and you really have to be on this constant thinking and planning and I really think that's where, I think that's where the hobbies come into it. At least that's what I see. And I hate to say, I just stumbled onto it, just I picked it up somewhere.

Carl Hutchinson: In some class that I was in, it's probably the one thing that I got out of a class. I'm gonna say it was a Cecil class. We'll give them the credit for it. I

Michael Smith: picked it. You're not

Carl Hutchinson: here to defend

Michael Smith: himself. Go ahead. I picked it up. Now I'm in class and it's like, oh

Kent Bullard: yeah we are creatures of habit and we tend to habitualize the things that are successful.

Kent Bullard: Right. What we do. So to take it one step further, I guess you could even say, you know, is the hobby something that is mentally stimulating in the sense of dealing with problems? 'cause I could see people answering hobbies that are not necessarily like, that seem a lot more passive, you know?

Carl Hutchinson: I don't know.

Carl Hutchinson: My wife does needle point and I don't know. Yeah, I guess there's problems with that too, that you gotta solve and mean. She does all kinds of craft hobbies. This house is full of it and,

Kent Bullard: I guess aside from saying you, you enjoy watching tv, you know? Yeah. Which is right. Anything other than that? Yeah, I,

Carl Hutchinson: I was gonna say, that's a mental note to anybody that's doing any kind of an interview, even if it's a fake

Kent Bullard: hobby, don't answer with that question.

Kent Bullard: Make

Carl Hutchinson: a hobby, but be prepared to answer a few questions, because there may be somebody that knows a lot more about it. I mean, you know, I know a little bit about motocross or motorcycles. I mean, that's a hobby that I could ask questions about. You know, badminton, eh, probably not. You know, I don't, you know, pickle ball?

Carl Hutchinson: I don't know. It's like ping pong in a big court, I guess. But I don't know.

Kent Bullard: So let's refocus let's go into the next piece here. Because I think there's a balance here. A lot of people who are listening to this out there. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, this is a lot of,

Carl Hutchinson: where are they going with this mumbo

Kent Bullard: jumbo where it's like, we're, oh yeah, people, you know, all of this and can take it as this very ethereal intangible thing, you know?

Kent Bullard: How do you approach the balance between driving a team for performance? 'cause a lot of people are gonna be numbers driven. I wanna make sure we're hitting targets and all that. And also maintaining a supportive, human-centric environment with your team where you're having the time for the people, parts of it.

Carl Hutchinson: I think that's the one question that I put. I don't know. I got that one figured out that's a master level of somebody else there that I need to get in their wake and figure out how this happens. Honestly, it's a bigger challenge for me now than it had been because we were such a numbers driven and, you know, go push and, you know, we could make the numbers work.

Carl Hutchinson: But you also wear your people out and, you know, you don't have the right attitude. So I honestly, I'm trying to do the softer approach to it. I'm trying to back out and really give people a lot more space and a lot more ability to make those decisions and learn some of the tough lessons of making those decisions to get some of that balance because.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, I hate to say we can't work from home. Okay. So it's not, we can give you that kind of a benefit. And any kind of time off is a detriment to the company. Twofold. I mean, when you really think about it. So trying to work within the people that you have, trying to give them the time that they need to, you know, to buy homes to get off early, to go to their kids' school plays and, you know, to ball games and things like that, to be somewhat flexible.

Carl Hutchinson: I think we're a lot more flexible now than what we've ever been in this industry. And I think that's how you keep the good people. I think that's how you motivate and motivate, iss the wrong word. Maybe inspire the right people. To show up early the next day, maybe to work, I hate to say work through lunch, but work through lunch that kind of thing.

Carl Hutchinson: So,

Kent Bullard: well not only work life balance things, but what about, you know, the time to invest in development discussions and team meetings where you're talking culture and, you know, those are practical things that take time within the business space and leveraging whether or not those are valuable to the overall output of the company.

Carl Hutchinson: Well, right, and I hate to say I'm struggling with that piece of it just this week because we've got some planning meetings that. Don't tell Michael, but I'm a little bit behind on, and I won't tell him either. So in the years past, it was pretty easy to do all this, and I'll use the word strategic. I love the word now.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, I was the guy that was doing it. I had my core people, they were around me. They and those were outside of my business. Those were the counselors and people that you bring in the group process. And we could go through and I could run budgets and I could run market plans and I could run projections.

Carl Hutchinson: And I could do all these things and I could have all this stuff done. The challenge is now nobody knows it but me. And now that we're trying to bring these other leaders in, and I really want their input and their buy-in as to what we're saying to be done. Now I'm running into this time barrier of vacations and, you know, people are off.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, I got a gentleman off right now for a couple of days, you know, he's moving and so now I can't take my leadership out. And so, no, I'm struggling with that. I'll be real honest with you. I'm really struggling with it. So one of the things that we've done to, to curb some of this is we went to a every other week lunch meeting entire staff at that location.

Carl Hutchinson: We're providing lunch, we're running a mini L 10 meeting or a mini leadership meeting. Don't tell 'em, but there's an agenda and I got the agenda in my head and we click through it. I'm not writing it out. I'm not telling you what the next steps are, but I mean, it's that check-in process. Tell me what works.

Carl Hutchinson: Tell me what doesn't work. Tell me what we can do better all of, get all this input as much as we can in a short period of time. So that's carving those times out. Honestly, even that as a challenge, because the pushback has been, you're taking my time, this is my lunch hour. I don't know I come up in an industry where you went to work and then you did all your training and everything after hours, you gave up your Saturdays.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, this is the old school we're dealing with the new school way. So it's a different way of thinking. Yeah. But so no, that's it. That is working for us. It's taken a long time for everybody to understand that it's a safe place and that they can speak, they can say. Such and such offended me. This tool doesn't work.

Carl Hutchinson: What do you think about doing this? You know, this needs to be fixed and it's fixing all the little things. Keeps them from being big things. I guess that's the best way to put it. And if we fix all the little things along the way, then they never become big things And you know, all of those big things have, we don't have the big fires anymore, they're just the little ones.

Carl Hutchinson: So that's, I guess that's the best way. And it's, that's probably the hardest thing is trying to carve out time now. 'Cause our industry and our people have changed. And I honestly, I think it's for the good, but then there's so many of us that are, my God, why don't we just stay after work and let's get this done?

Carl Hutchinson: And, you know, it's like everybody's wanting to, no, I'm going home. I, it's like, well, I really can't ask you or demand you to stay. So we have to figure out how to carve out time. Yeah,

Kent Bullard: that's right. You're hiring with pe people with hobbies. There's more to life than just work, right? I do wanna commend, I just wanna make a comment for Carl.

Kent Bullard: You know, he said we experienced this problem and here's what I'm doing about it. Just to, well, you know, talk about leadership, right? We

Carl Hutchinson: keep changing it, you know, 'cause I mean, we're running kind of the EOS program as closely as I can run it. So we're running an operating system and it's a lot of meetings and I, and I've told this to Michael several times, it's like, man, I'm meeting out and it's just every day there's another meeting, there's another meeting.

Carl Hutchinson: And but it works. And that's the challenge of it is it works. I think that what we're experiencing is we're running extremely lean right at the moment, and it's hard to carve out. It's hard to pull out that leader that you need with

Kent Bullard: everybody there. Yeah.

Carl Hutchinson: And still get stuff done because somebody's being shorted because that person's not there.

Carl Hutchinson: So if you're running fat, it's a lot easier. But if you're running very lean, which is where we're at right at the moment, and we chose to be lean at this point. We got tired of all of the distractions, so let's just run lean for a while. But that's what's also turned into a challenge, especially when you have a leadership meeting.

Carl Hutchinson: Then you have, you turn right around and you have a staff meeting, and you try to do all those in the same day. And then, oh, now we have a planning meeting to go to. Now we have a financial meeting to go to. Now we have a. Strategic, what are we gonna do for next year meeting? And yeah's,

Kent Bullard: there's always things that I personally like to prioritize when I'm having a meeting is just either this meeting is here to make a decision for how we move forward, or this meeting is gonna save us 90% of the headache later.

Carl Hutchinson: And the, just for clarification. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The second one is the biggest thing that I try to explain to all of our employees that speak up. Let us know what's going on. Let us help you, let us fix it. Let's figure out what training you need. Because if I can train you now, we have less headache in the future.

Carl Hutchinson: Everything has that. Let me get you through fire safety. Let me get you through whatever. And we don't have that big headache later. But to circle back, that's honestly, that's one of the biggest challenges we have in this industry. Not just in-house, in our house, but as an industry whole. We see our associations really struggling, and we see our business development groups struggling because the mentality is I don't wanna go seven o'clock at night.

Carl Hutchinson: I don't want to go eight o'clock at night. I don't wanna give up my Saturday. I'm already giving up. So honestly that's probably one of the biggest things that we have trouble with in our industry. And as, as I talk to people in other industries and I don't know how they relate because we're such a production oriented industry that like, if somebody needed to go get 20 hours worth of continuing education, they just go do it.

Carl Hutchinson: Well, I don't know who does their job when they're gone. You know, it's like if we sent two technicians out to, to do that, who does that? It just doesn't get done. And that's, that, that's a real challenge for us. 'cause we are so product driven, we're so sales driven. We're so, and it's tough to carve that time out.

Carl Hutchinson: Well, I think if you can communicate,

Michael Smith: Ken, can I, oh yeah, go ahead Mike. No, just a little bit. You know, I often meet owners who say, you know, I put in an EOS system or something similar to it, and they come and they say it's not working and this is not a slam on EOS or traction or any of that.

Michael Smith: And they come and they say It's not working because we sit in our meetings, we have our L tens, whatever, and people take, pick up their rocks and they promise they're gonna get it done, and we make all the commitments and then they come back to the next meeting and it's not done. And so then we sort of castigate each other and we reset the expectations and we add a couple more rocks and they go away and they come back to the next one and it's not done.

Michael Smith: It's incredibly frustrating. And then they'll say something like, this system doesn't work right, because they get to that point. And I'll say, it does but I'll say, here's the difference. If you do the accountability thing with those fine accountability systems, and there's many of 'em, you've got an accountability book.

Michael Smith: On your bookshelf right behind you that some folks know as well. Right? And those systems are great, but if the people aren't motivated from within themselves to be engaging in what they're doing, then these meetings are meetings for the sake of meetings and you hand them rocks and they're carrying a load and it's like, why do I have to carry this on top of what I have to do?

Michael Smith: Or do you know how busy I am already? Or blah, blah, blah. Right. Well, we, what we seem to find is that when the teams and Carl your is in the done a chunk of it, and there's still always more to do when individuals decide they're going to grow their own life. Right? It's like, I decide working for you, Carl.

Michael Smith: I'm gonna make the most of my life. I'm gonna make it. Personal side, professional side. I wanna master everything I do at work. I'm gonna go home and master my relationships. I'm gonna go back onto into my friend group and clean it up a little bit and fire some of the jerks that I should have fired a long time ago and all that, right?

Michael Smith: I had to decide I'm gonna lead a different kind of a life. All of a sudden. I want the metrics, and this is gonna sound crazy, but it's like, you know what? Now I come to the L 10 meeting and guess who I'm answering to? I'm not answering to you. I'm answering to me because I've decided that you're gonna help me.

Michael Smith: And you said it. You have so many seeds that you've sown through this. Carl, I'm gonna pick up on a couple you want you've aligned what I want with what you want from me. Right. Your job as the owner is, look, I gotta move the company and I got all the stuff that needs to get done. You guys are all here working and you're growing in your own profession.

Michael Smith: My job is to know you and what you want and need, and then I gotta put all that together so that I ask from each of you what you are gonna be able to give and want to give so that at the end that all adds up and we all get what we want, which is a highly successful company. Enough profitability to raise paychecks, all the stuff that we all want, all the way around the board.

Michael Smith: And when the culture takes that turn. And people aren't there anymore for a job. They're not there anymore because they have to be there. 'cause Carl's gonna be on their back if they don't, or the store manager or whatever. Accountability suddenly becomes this thing about, look, hold me accountable and I want you to pick out what I can do better.

Michael Smith: Most people are like, what? I don't want you to talk to me about my failures. Are you kidding me? It's like, no. At the end of the meeting, I don't want to hear what went well. I want to hear what we could do better next time because I'm on a journey here and you're here. You told me you were gonna come help me with this journey, Carl, and I want you to push me right?

Michael Smith: I want you to hold me accountable. I want you to kick my rear end, right? We have peer groups of owners and they always ask, we want our butts kick more. And it's like, you like this? It's like that's what helps us to stay moving, right? Because there are times when we sit down and go, I'm tired. Then you look in the mirror and it's only you looking at you and you go, Hey, that guy looks tired too.

Michael Smith: And then you decide to sit there. Right? But if somebody calls on the phone, did you get that report done? You're like just a second. I'll get it out tomorrow. Right. Yeah. And again, it's just back and that's where I'm just building an awful lot of stuff. You said when you get a true championship team turned on, they are in the metrics 'cause they want them for each of their individual selves and they want to know how the team's doing.

Michael Smith: 'cause you know, at the end of the day, the way you become a chronic champion is you beat everybody else more consistently than you lose. The only way to know that is if you keep score. As dumb as that sound. You can't just do it and go, well, that one felt pretty good. It's like, you gotta win. And that's where the metrics part comes in.

Michael Smith: So I, and you're, you have largely turned that corner and you know that you're past, the meetings are a pain in the neck. 'cause they just take time away from me. Now you're into the, well what do they really mean to me? And why am I here? And now I sure they care. And some of the folks that work for you are there and some of 'em are getting there.

Michael Smith: And it's good, right? Because 'cause that's when it takes on a whole different nature. Anyway, I wanted to add that to the mix. 'cause I often hear, oh, my accountability system doesn't work. It's like, well, let's dig into that a little bit. It's probably not the system that's the problem at this point.

Michael Smith: And you get back into the human side, right?

Carl Hutchinson: So give it a, you get the nail on the head and any operating system is not easy. I mean, really it's not, it doesn't matter what it is. You know, you can read all these books and do all, but doing it and holding yourself accountable to it is probably the hardest thing, right.

Carl Hutchinson: But yeah the, to carve out the time is probably the hardest thing. Because anytime you have people that are in production roles of whatever, it doesn't matter, whatever role they're in, they're producing and you take 'em away from that is a challenge. But I've always looked at it as, if I took 20 minutes of your time or an hour of your time, can I save you three hours later?

Carl Hutchinson: Can I save you upset customer? Can I save you some kind of headache? Or even if it's just a discussion or passing on the knowledge of, hey, let's don't work on that. You know, let's some of this old knowledge that we have, some of these newer people don't know. To not do. I think that's the best way to put it.

Michael Smith: Yeah. Well, let me add to your list. Can I, can we have a meeting where I share something with you that will help you to have a better life? Yeah. I mean, that, that's really what we're after, right? Is to have the meetings be productive in that way. And when people get it and they realize the kind of investment that you're making in them, that you actually care about 'em and you do know who they are, and you do understand their career and personal aspirations, and you're asking them at work to do what they're good at and also what's gonna cause them to go farther with what they want and dream about in their life.

Michael Smith: Why wouldn't I show up in a meeting that you hold at that point? 'cause I know I'm gonna get something outta it, right? Which,

Carl Hutchinson: well, and so many of them are shocked that we want them to be better husbands or better. Wives or better partners or better fathers or whatever. And a lot of the things that we try to teach and do is not necessarily for their professional position.

Carl Hutchinson: And it's how do we make them a better person? And I think if we can make 'em a better person, we've got a much better employee staff member, team player, whatever tag you wanna put on them. I try to, family members is really what I I don't know. It's kind of weird, but I think if we could, I think family members will call each other out faster than maybe coworkers.

Michael Smith: And they enjoy it more, do they? Right.

Carl Hutchinson: Well, yeah. Your brothers and sisters will pick on you. Depends on the family. Yeah.

Kent Bullard: Yeah. Or you get blackball. I will say this, I feel like as a society, we've forgotten the importance of mentorship.

Carl Hutchinson: Yes. And

Kent Bullard: I think, you know, with the advent of the internet, you know, I talk about this a lot, but with the advent of the internet the dissemination of knowledge and information is now, you know.

Kent Bullard: You've gotta go around on both sides because now it's easier for me to not have to go to somebody like Michael and ask him a question, but I can go online and Google an answer. But at the same time, it's also kind of a lot easier for the older generation to go, well, I mean, they can just Google it, so I'll focus my attention elsewhere.

Kent Bullard: And you kind of have this like, separation and really the younger people really need that. And I think they know that, right? And so just reaching out and making that connection and saying, you know, I wanna mentor you, not just bark at you and tell you what has to happen, but really invest in them because that's what we've done generations prior.

Kent Bullard: Yeah,

Michael Smith: I like that. Mentorship. Go ahead Carl.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah, go ahead. I mean, when I come into the industry as a technician, you know, 40 years ago, everything has a 40 years slant to it now. I begged for a mentor. Yeah, I mean, and basically they just threw you into the deep end of the pool and you either, you know, swam or you sank.

Carl Hutchinson: And I did not like that. I mean, I figured out how to swim, but I didn't swim well and I've been told that there's three things in my life and my professional life. There's the right way, the wrong way in Carl's way. Well, Carl's Way is because Carl learned it on his own, and he wasn't really taught anything.

Carl Hutchinson: What it works, I mean, I tell my son a lot. It's says, well, he looks at some of the stuff that I do and as, but it works. I, and that's all I need to know is it works. So yeah, the right way, wrong way in Carls way. And so mentorship in our industry, I don't think really came along until maybe 20 years ago or 15 years ago, that we really started talking about apprentice programs and bringing people in and.

Carl Hutchinson: Tutoring them. I mean, I think I'm a product of that. Like I said earlier in this was I was being what, I forget the word that I used. I was being I can't think of modified or groomed, that's where word was for groomed. I was being groomed for a position that I didn't know. The but we really need that in our industry and not just in our own houses.

Carl Hutchinson: I, I really think that I've had a lot of great mentors that own businesses, other places, and I get to watch and see how they interact and how they d deal with their employees and how they deal with their hiring and I, how they deal with those things. So I think we need to be mentors for other.

Carl Hutchinson: Businesses and in our groups. But in-house I think that's a huge thing. I think we're never gonna get our leadership teams to where we want 'em to be if we're not gonna mentor them, if we're not gonna bring 'em up, we're not gonna get our technicians to where they need to be if we don't have programs for them.

Carl Hutchinson: And really I guess one of the bigger challenges is hiring the experience that wants to teach the ones. That's probably one of the bigger challenges that I've seen in our industry is the ones that have a lot of experience are not necessarily good at teaching. They say they will, but when they get in, you know, it's that culture.

Carl Hutchinson: Well, I mean, they've had a,

Kent Bullard: they've had a system that has predominantly rewarded them on them being the one that answers the question. And so there hasn't been any in my, you know, yes. Just as a guess here, I don't think there's been enough utility for them to teach others. Right,

Carl Hutchinson: right. Yeah. And well, you're giving away their time to, to teach somebody else and you know, that's, you're back to that they're not making money.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. You

Kent Bullard: know, not making Right. Hours on, right. Yeah. You're back to

Carl Hutchinson: that. What's in it for me? And we have to figure out workarounds and I've I've learned a lot in that realm. I've learned a lot of things that you shouldn't do.

Michael Smith: Well, I have a question for you. I haven't you haven about one out

Carl Hutchinson: yet either, but we're still working on it and we're Can I

Michael Smith: throw one thing in?

Michael Smith: Yeah. Before we slide away from this one. I'll tell you what a number of the folks that I work with are finding the folks that have been in our industry for 25, 30, 35 years. And, you know, if you've been under a car for 30 years, your hands hurt, your back hurt, your knees hurt. There's folks that can't pull on a wrench the way they used to.

Michael Smith: And, you know, in their minds while they're working every day is, what am I gonna do? I'm X age and what's my future look like? And I just wanna throw this out there. The older we get. The more it seems that the legacy questions become important to everybody, not just owners, and what's the legacy for your business, but also, you know, what you start to think about the people that helped you in life and the people that, that you wouldn't be where you are if it wasn't for them.

Michael Smith: And it doesn't matter what your current job is or been seminal people in your life. You ask folks who are kind of wearing out, if you will, physically, mentally, emotionally, and you say to them what? What would you like to do next? The older we get, the more we tend to get a response. You know, I would like to help the next generation.

Michael Smith: I'd like to pass along to the folks that are behind me and help them pay it forward. Like, you know, somebody paid it forward to me back in the good old days. And from that perspective, I just wanna throw that out there for thinking that, you know, there's a change in the mentality, I think, from this transactional industry that we've been in.

Michael Smith: As we realize that humans are different today, they have a lower tolerance for BS at work, which may be a good thing. We also have a lower attention span, right? That means they don't, our younger generations tend not to be thinking about, oh, I'd like to spend 10,000 hours learning this. They're like, can I just find the hack on the internet and get there short way, the mentoring things up against it, but.

Michael Smith: The folks that have got the experience would love to mentor, and in relationships that are healthy, the people who are new to the industry, it's nurturing and positive and productive to have a mentor. And so even though we're up against the social trends of the quick and easy, you find a hack and, you know, cut the corner and not really learn, but just go find the next hack online.

Michael Smith: Next time you get into this genuine mastery conversation and both ends of the spectrum, it becomes meaningful very quickly. And I'm just throwing that in there. It's kind of a mystery, mysterious conversation when you first start having it. And people look at you like you're from another planet. But the more they think about it, it actually does match our developmental psychology, as you know, as adults from childhood to death, if you will.

Michael Smith: And so it, it really does bring us back to how we're made. When we start talking about this and people aspire to it, I'm gonna say, and end here very quickly. Once you put it out there and they start to get it, they're like, you know what, I really like this suits me. And it does, it suits humans.

Michael Smith: So just encouraging us on the backside of this, that this, even though it is becoming less of a common subject if you make it a subject that's more unique, but it's also very powerful human to human. So,

Kent Bullard: so Michael, we're probably gonna have to do another podcast on this subject. Just, you know, this question I'm gonna ask you.

Michael Smith: Sure.

Michael Smith: But

Michael Smith: I'll try to keep it short.

Kent Bullard: What are how do I, how do, how does the youth, the younger generations find a mentor? That's

Michael Smith: a great question, and I would I would ask, I, you know, here's the thing. I would, it's a little bit like we talk as owners about finding the rock stars, the unicorns, the champions to come work for us.

Michael Smith: Sometimes you have to kiss some toads, and if you're a young person, and you, and I'm gonna say this Carl, you probably reflect on this too, when I'm running a business and a young person walks up to me and says, I want to learn to be great and I'm gonna ask you if you'll help me. Not a lot of people have that conversation.

Michael Smith: And does that, I mean, that sticks out in my mind. I remember those people. I can count 'em on, you know, two hands after 40, almost five years of doing this. Right? And, but those people stood out and basically they were taking charge of their life and saying, I want, I'd like to ask you if it's not too much to ask, to spend some time with.

Michael Smith: Me, and I'm not gonna be obnoxious about it. Whatever you're willing to give. But I would love to have that if you're a young person, go have that conversation with somebody who looks like they're respectable to you. And you may get into it and find out they're not Carl. Maybe one of those people that once you start mentoring and they close the door in the office and go, now how can we lie to the customer and cheat that one back so we don't end up losing all the money on that repair?

Michael Smith: And you end up as the young person kind of walking away from that going, Nope, not for me. I mean, you're fully entitled to fire a menka too here, guys. Right? But I would ask Kent. I would just simply ask, and it's not, doesn't happen enough. It doesn't happen enough that's a wearing question.

Michael Smith: It's an attractive one for an old guy. Let me

Carl Hutchinson: jump in here. I think before you Yeah, go. Yeah, for sure. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Carl. So I don't think I've ever asked somebody to be my mentor. But I've sought them out. I have a handful locally and then. When we got into the group process many years ago, that's what you're asking for.

Carl Hutchinson: I mean, you know, you're I didn't know that. I mean, I was trying to learn all the stuff that I thought I knew and didn't know, and then you realize you don't know it. But then all of a sudden you're thrust into this group of, and there's usually four or five of 'em in there that have achieved, and you just marry yourself to them.

Carl Hutchinson: You just gravitate to them. I've never asked one of them to be my mentor, but it didn't take a whole lot to figure it out that all of my conversations were over here or over there, or, I understand this guy's. Good at marketing or I understand this guy is a good people person. I understand this person is a good process, procedure person, and you start marrying yourselves up with these people and all of a sudden they're your mentors.

Carl Hutchinson: And you know, I have a lot of those and a lot of 'em have went on now out of the industry to do other things. And you don't. I think that's what you need to do. Don't be afraid to you know, I like the ask the question. I feel like I'm very bold and I do a lot of things, but I don't know that I would go ask somebody to be my mentor.

Carl Hutchinson: That's our challenge. But I could sure be in the room with them enough that all I'll absorb what they're putting off, I'll absorb it. And honestly, I think that's one of the things that's gotten us to where we're at, is just being in the room with people that are so much smarter and they've been there, done that.

Carl Hutchinson: Or you ask 'em a few key questions and all of a sudden now you've got an answer to something. I think we as business owners in this industry, have to make an environment of when you're hiring people in a, we've got people here that will help you. You're not gonna be stuck out on an island. It's not a, an individual sport here.

Carl Hutchinson: This is if you're gonna come in at whatever level you're coming in at, there's somebody around here that probably has a little more experience and would be willing to help you get you out of that jam. I think that's the environment that we have to create whether we have an individual person that is the mentor, which we've had in the past, and or do we have a group of people that is a mentor?

Carl Hutchinson: And I think that's where we're at right now as we go through this lean stage is we have a group, it's a group effort, and I think we're in a very much of a help everybody situation. So I think that's. The young people that are wanting to be in this industry, God bless 'em to come in. We want 'em here.

Carl Hutchinson: But if I was coming into this industry, even with all the education that I think that you can get through the colleges, I think it's, you're just barely scratching the surface now. I mean, it was so different years ago. To come in now is there's it takes so much to spool up and be where we need you to be in four or five years.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, I think you could be 4, 5, 10 years into this industry. Now, when I come into the industry, it only took you a year or six months. I mean, it just the gap is so much more now. You know, we're not learning about fuel ratios and compression ratios and stroke and bore and all, I mean.

Carl Hutchinson: Honestly, it doesn't matter. We're learning about computer controls and, you know, how do your wipers work? And honestly, all this stuff is so computerized anymore that they have to be very intelligent. It's so, so the learning gap is a lot bigger now. I mean, it's takes a lot more. So I think the answer to the question is I think we have to be the ones that create the environment of you can come in here and learn even the master technicians that we hire, you're gonna come in here and learn.

Carl Hutchinson: You may know more than everybody here, but you are, you're gonna come in here and learn because you're gonna learn and then you're gonna teach somebody else. So I think that's the environments that we have to create in this industry. So I think that's the answer. I love that. Yeah.

Kent Bullard: So we're kind of getting at time here and I wanna do kind of a lightning round with you, Carl.

Kent Bullard: Okay. Oh man. Is that fair? That's fair. These are gonna, some big questions come. I don't have to date you at the

Carl Hutchinson: end of this, do I?

Kent Bullard: No. I think so, so three questions. Okay. First one, how has focusing on the human side of your business changed you as a leader?

Carl Hutchinson: It's made me more of a thoughtful leader.

Carl Hutchinson: I think. I think I would have to ask the people around me. I think I've softened my position a lot on some of the, what I would call my demands or my requests. I think I hire differently now than what I did in the past. I think I interview a little differently. I think our conversations that we have maybe not quite structured as opposed to more getting to know you, finding out what you're wanting to do and can we marry that up with what we're trying to achieve.

Carl Hutchinson: And really find out what's important to people. You know, 'cause that's, it's so different from employee to employee every, you, there's so many things that are different and finding out those things. So I think that's probably one of the biggest things that has changed me and honestly I'll give kudos to Michael on this one, is telling people that they are better than what they think they are because they've been told incorrectly.

Carl Hutchinson: And to get that out of their heads. So every time I hear these negatives is to reinforce them with positives. And, you know, I think I'm also telling myself that as I'm telling them, because I've heard so many of these things over the years. I think we all have. So I think those are one of the biggest changes in the way I view what I do and our teams.

Carl Hutchinson: Check that box. What

Kent Bullard: advice? Yeah. What advice would you give to other leaders that are aiming to create a workplace culture that is gonna prioritize wellbeing and growth and personal development?

Carl Hutchinson: Gosh, what advice would I get? I would think figure out what you want and who you are first. And I'm only saying this because I'm going through this myself.

Carl Hutchinson: I thought I knew who I was, but I also know what we were portraying. And the two are different and I'm trying to figure out how to marry those. And I think we, and I think I'm going down that path. I think I'm starting to live that path a little better. So I think figuring out who you are and what you want to portray it is a team concept, but the team is only as good as the leader.

Carl Hutchinson: So if the leader doesn't believe in what they're doing, I think we're really struggling right off the bats. And I'm just saying this because this is where I'm at. So once you figure out what you want and who you are, stick to your guns. I think that's it. Because there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna fall off the bus, the boat, whatever the heck you wanna call it.

Carl Hutchinson: I think there's gonna be a lot of people that's going to fall off. They may not like the direction that you want to go, or they may not be willing to go where you're wanting to go. And that's some of the things that I've learned in this past year or so is, don't be afraid to lose some of the people because you will find people that will fill the void.

Carl Hutchinson: Your people will fill that void and then you haven't found, you haven't hired the person yet. You haven't met the person that you need yet. And you'll get through it. And I think that's the biggest thing. And I'm only saying that because I have to speak that to myself. 'cause I'm in that boat.

Carl Hutchinson: I'm in that same position as we're in this evolving position of really trying to figure out, well, I need to get back to our roots of where this business came from and get back to what got us here. And I think that's going to shake it up a little bit. And don't be afraid to put yourself out there.

Carl Hutchinson: I think that's the best advice that I could give anybody at this point.

Kent Bullard: I love that. Last question. You know, what do you hope to leave in your organization and your community and beyond for your legacy?

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. Legacy's a great thing. You know, and I'm trying to get away from these truth tapes that, that stuck in my head.

Carl Hutchinson: Yeah. The old messages of the new one. The old messages, yeah. You know, the uneducated guy that, you know, you know, if you work really hard, you'll eventually get there. It might take 40 years, but you'll get there. And honestly, the legacy that I wanna leave is not about me. The legacy that I wanna leave is about those that I leave behind.

Carl Hutchinson: The complete automotive name. I would love to see that. The rest of my life here on Earth and into the next generations and the next generations. But I think that's asking a lot. I think the legacy that I wanna leave when I step outta this industry is that we've left people behind that have the same passion, morals, and ethics and views that I have and that I've been brought up with.

Carl Hutchinson: And I think that's the best legacy that I wanna leave because I just keep thinking that it's not about me. It's not about complete automotive, it's not about it's just not it. It's the people that are around us and the, and what we're gonna do. You know, I would, I like to be as famous as Coca-Cola or Disney prob.

Carl Hutchinson: Then again, yes, but no, I'm not willing to put that much effort into it. So I think that's the legacy that I wanna leave, is the people behind me, they can be proud of what we've done and proud of what they're doing, that they're stepping into. I think that's probably the biggest, the best legacy that I could leave is not only for our community, for the people, but for our industry also.

Carl Hutchinson: You know, I think there, there's a lot of people that come and go in this industry and there's a lot of people that do it dis disservice to it and really make it tough for the rest of us that are trying to do well and not just make money at it and not just whatever, you know, we're actually trying to grow people and to be a good service service to our community.

Carl Hutchinson: So I really think that's a legacy that I really wanna leave. Legacy is a tough question because six months from now it might change, but I think that's where I'm at on, on this ones. That's what I want people to speak. At my funeral about, that's what I want people to speak about. Not only me, but the people that, that I've trained or brought in, that they have that same type of outlook on life.

Carl Hutchinson: So, yep,

Michael Smith: it'll play that out. Great answer.

Kent Bullard: Well, from, you know, what it takes to hold a team accountable to our perspectives on failure, all the way to does, do you have a hobby? And what is it? This has been such a tremendous conversation. I definitely would love to bring you back, Carl, to dissect some of these things.

Kent Bullard: Even just the idea of, you know, what is mentorship? How do we pursue it from both ends, I think would be a phenomenal conversation to have. Absolutely. This has been absolutely invaluable. Those of you who are listening to this and have found value in this conversation, please help share this with others like and share.

Kent Bullard: It helps the algorithm, but most importantly, it gets this content to people who need it. If you want more information about what we do at the institute, you can find that at we are the institute.com. And Carl, thank you again so much for your time today.

Carl Hutchinson: You're welcome. Truly, honestly I enjoy speaking about the industry.

Carl Hutchinson: I don't necessarily like speaking about myself that much

Michael Smith: for you. I start seeing in my room ears, which for clinical learning experiences, right? So. Right, right. Carl, this is awesome. Thank you. All

Kent Bullard: of this, all of this is a part of a grander conversation. And again, those listeners out there who wanna join the conversation, please ask your questions. Let's continue this discussion in the comments below, and we'll see you guys in the next episode.